On Nov 19, 2006, at 4:30 PM, centga@... wrote:

The reason that these cars were thought to have the Hutchins Roof is because of the end caps where the roof meets the car side. Supposedly this is a spotting feature of the Hutchins Roof. I was involved in many conversations about this. The Accurail single sheathed box cars has the Hutchins roof. If you look at any overhead photo the roofs on the C of G cars it does not match the Accurail model. Also several pictures I have looked at of the Central cars show a irregular spacing pattern of the roof panels or sections, they are not all the same width, then compared to the roof on the Accurail model the spacing is even. We need to find more and better roof shots of these cars but the general consensus is they did not receive the Hutchins roof.

A private message I recently sent to Paul Lyons read, in part:

The question seems to be when/whether they were re-roofed with Hutchins or similar all steel roofs. I have two photos of these cars, one with a 12-49 reweigh date and the other (a ventilated car) with a 1951 reweigh date. Both definitely had steel roofs, when photographed. Neither photo shows the roofs well, but it appears to me that the roofs were not Hutchins (with the dimpled ends on the seam caps) but Chicago-Hutchins Zenith roofs. Part of the confusion may be that in the late 1930s the Standard Railway Equipment Co. acquired Chicago-Hutchins and thereafter produced Hutchins and Zenith roofs as well as various roofs of its own design and tended to apply its long-standing Murphy trade name more or less indiscriminately to all of them.

I will add that, in both of the photos I have, the spacing of the seam caps seems to be even, not irregular.

Richard Hendrickson